Dancing Around The Issue
by The Lilac Pilgrim
Summary: Some time after the end of Portal 2, Wheatley wonders how best to approach the Space Core with a talk about 'feelings'. Spaceley pairing. One-shot. Fluffy? IDK.


He wasn't quite sure how long he'd been stranded out here. Alone. Guilty. Bored to tears, except he hadn't any tears to shed, so for a small amount of time he'd tried to figure out how he could reconfigure his system in order to be able to cry. Nothing had worked, and so he'd gone back to sighing, floating, talking to himself.

That, and watching that little moron having the time of his life.

Barrel rolling, loop-de-looping, twirling about as he flew gracefully around the blue rogue intelligence core. Space Core, or Spacey as he often liked to call him, was really making the most of their situation. At first it had really irritated Wheatley, and he'd shouted at the round-headed (bodied?) buffoon more than once, but never was the other core discouraged by his companion's behaviour.

"We're in space," he'd reply, a look of elation about him somehow. "Enjoy space! Space-life; space is life now! SPAAAAaaaaaaaaace!"

But Wheatley didn't want space to be his life. That is, he didn't want this vast, star-filled, lonely existence to be his life, even if he did deserve it. Oh, how he deserved it. He had really hurt that lady, put her in serious danger, acted like a… like a… something he most assuredly wasn't, and he would never, ever tell himself that he was one. But he had certainly acted like one. And he was really, truly sorry.

For what might have been the two millionth time since arriving in space, thinking about it caused Wheatley to activate his sigh mode.

"Space."

Wheatley didn't think he could count the number of times Spacey had repeated the word since they'd got here. It had aggravated him to no end, and for a while it seemed to be rewriting the blue core's memory, it had been insisted upon so often. As he heard it spoken once more, the excitement not having faded yet for the metal ball as he whizzed round him, Wheatley gave what could have been interpreted as an affectionate little smile.

"Yeah, mate," he murmured, watching his companion. "This is space. And we're in it. Alone. Together."

Together. With Spacey. It would have been a horrible sounding fate to him before, but he wasn't so sure any more.

After 999999 minutes floating around without much else to do – other than meticulously counting the minutes – the rogue core had been completely worn down, and had his first ever conversation with the silly little metal ball. He wasn't so bad, really. Sure, his conversations were all one-tracked, but… Actually, one-sided, too. All of the corrupted core's conversations were single tracked and single minded – no, wait, there was a far easier term for that; one-track minded. Yes, all of the little fellow's conversations were one-track minded, but that was okay. Wheatley had mellowed out significantly over time. Well, in reality it had taken him from the time he'd been separated from the Enrichment Centre to the moment when he'd been screaming for that sweaty lady to grab onto him to really come crashing down to Earth. Figuratively speaking, of course, since they were actually nowhere near the little blue marble of a planet. He didn't really know how far away they were, but they were closer to the moon than to Earth. So they were pretty far away.

Their first conversation had been about space, he remembered fondly. Why he remembered a conversation he'd had a billion and one times since then so fondly, he didn't know, or rather didn't want to _say_ or even _think_. And you could hardly call it conversation when the only words spoken were, in alphabetical order: shut, space, and up. Actually, now that he thought about it, that wasn't such a good attempt, really, that. The more he looked back on it, the more he realised that he wasn't so fond of it at all. But the _second_ conversation! Aw…

Needless to say, the second conversation went far better. They discussed the number of stars around them and Wheatley even helped him to count higher than three, which was all pretty overwhelming for the little guy, but ultimately worth the effort. Nothing could match the delight they both took in one of them learning something new. They counted four stars that day. After that, the Space Core realised that he was able to roll in place and started freaking out. Still, he'd learned a new number with the help of Wheatley. Maybe soon he'd be able to teach him the wonders of five, six and seven. Perhaps even eight and nine. And then the blue core could maybe tell him that delightful joke about seven eating nine.

"Space."

His thoughts were momentarily interrupted by his companion's interjection. The simplest of things made him just so happy. Though space was hardly simple and was in fact quite a vast and complex _thing_. But they'd been in space for quite some time and yet the jittery sphere still found every star and every speck and every meteor off in the distance to be the most exciting thing _ever_. God, he was a _simpleton_.

And yet that just made him even more adora—endearing. Yes, endearing wasn't quite as charged a word for it; much, much better. Less likely to spark those weird feelings that kept rising and overloading his conscious thought processes. So much so sometimes that he had to close his optical receptor and just zone out for a while, moving files around and trying to organise his thoughts. It never seemed to do anything, though, and the feelings came back and clouded his mind. Whether this sorting process ever really worked for Wheatley was dubious, all things considered…

"SPACE!"

But the Space Core was so _repetitive_! And loud. Irritating. Always orbiting him at ridiculous speeds and shouting about the obvious. And no matter how much Wheatley yelled, whenever he did yell, within seconds Spacey was over it and rolling around screaming about space travel. And he was so _happy_. And talkative.

And he never called Wheatley names. Oh, there were those feelings again. Right there, at the forefront of his mind. Constantly opening up and bugging him. Like one of those despicable viruses that bombarded you with ads and wouldn't go away until you installed some particularly sneaky antivirus software and completed a whole list of meticulous tasks in order to even disable the program in the first place. It was beginning to look as though the sneaky antivirus he had to install involved _vocalising__his__weird__considerations_. Oh God, this was going to be so _difficult_. How to even get the little guy to understand what he was talking about? Goodness knows that he'd had such difficulty talking to _that__ladycomputer_ about stuff like that. When he'd been attached to her, no less. Did not want to listen, that woman. No time for anyone but herself. And her bloody cats. But this wasn't the time to start thinking about all that. Or was it? Would it distract him enough from his previous thoughts? The ones about him and Spacey and—oh, nope, there they were again.

Clearing his throat – or rather imitating the human throat-clearing noise as he readied himself for the deepest conversation he'd had since he tried reading Machiavelli – he focused his blue 'eye' on his space-obsessed friend.

"Hey, Spacey?"

The moronic ball didn't stop his travels, but then Wheatley wasn't even quite sure that he could stop, since he'd started and had orbited him for a long, long time now at a very high speed.

"Spacey, I think we should talk."

The yellow-lit orb seemed to be _thinking_ about that concept. In a really serious way that involved actual decision-making and not just obsessively going through the same memory banks over and over. Actually, he wasn't sure he'd ever seen him think this hard. He hoped his circuits weren't too weak for that sort of thing. "Is it about space?"

"No. Well, yeah, a bit." It was about Space rather than space, but how else would he get his friend to listen?

"Talk about space, in space?"

The pair locked eyes, and Wheatley gave a nod and as close as he could get to a smile.

"Talking about Spacey and Wheatley in space." _Hint,__hint._

"Everything is good to talk about in space," the other core responded good-naturedly, and his orbit appeared to slow down around the intelligence core, who sighed apprehensively. How did he approach this with this single-minded twit?

"W-well, y'see Spacey," he began. So far, so good. No big problems; a meteor hadn't decimated them, his emotion circuits hadn't exploded. "We've been out here for a long time now and… I'm beginning to feel some… feelings."

"Space feelings?"

"…You could say that, yeah. Or! Or, you could say, _Spacey_ feelings. Do you see? Eh? Play on words. Wordplay. Little bit of… intelligence, there." Ah, he was sharp one, very clever, very clever indeed, and he glowed with pride, floating alongside Spacey.

"I see _everything_ in space."

"…What?"

"Everything is good in space."

Ohh. Poor little thing. It had gone right over his sweet little head, hadn't it? Any other time he would have patiently explained the joke, feeling ever so superior to his friend. Though he could never feel quite as superior as he had in _that__woman_'s body, but he never wanted to feel like that again when it made him act like such a… Oh, well now he was getting frustrated.

"…Look, I'm trying to tell you something! It's, well, y'see I just feel… _stuff_ for you."

"Space stuff?"

"Will you SHUT UP about space for just ONE minute?"

Oh no. No, no, no… He had been far too harsh with the Space Sphere just then, and instantly, he felt really bad about losing his temper with the adorable little idiot. There, he'd thought it; he was quite adorable. Now if he could… _say__it_.

"Oh… oh, I'm really sorry, Spacey; I didn't mean it." He looked away, back at the first star they'd ever counted together. It was so bright. So big and so bright and beautiful. "We can talk about space all you want, whenever you want. All the time, in fact. We've got the rest of our lives, so… that'll be forever." He'd even take him to meet the Sun if he still wanted… and they could talk about that until they burned out or the universe-loving orb got bored. He wondered which would come first…

"Wheatley says stop talking about space for a minute. Wheatley is my space buddy. Space buddies listen to each other."

That… didn't sound like Spacey. That was almost eloquent. "What?"

"It's important to care for your space buddy."

And there was, for the first time in what felt like centuries, a brief silence. A brief silence that felt like absolutely forever.

"Spacey, you probably don't really understand," he said in an almost patronising tone. "But I _like_ you."

He put as much stress as he could without straining his vocal processor onto the word 'like', and he was proud of his efforts. Spacey did not seem to understand at all, however, which was, to say the least, disappointing.

"I like you, too, SpaceWheatley!" Oh, the stupid, cheerful little thing.

"No, you're not getting it…" Preparing his system for the emotional experience, he shuddered nervously. How he wished he could shrink even further into his casing. "I think you're bloody _brilliant._ You make me feel clever when everyone else tells me I'm a moron. You don't care if I don't really read Machiavelli or if I don't really get classical music. You're not violent or dangerous or vindictive, you're _definitely_ not mute. You are passionate, and ambitious, and curious, and you live in a world all your own that I would just _love_ to be a part of. And most of all, all you care about is that there is space, and you're in it."

"With you." Was that an agreement? Was there… something there? Had he actually _listened_ to that embarrassingly emotional drivel? How the hell was Wheatley going to live with himself for the rest of eternity?

"Sp… Spacey?"

"Space dance?"

"Huh? Hey, wait! What are you -?"

Suddenly, Spacey hurtled towards him, some sort of magnetic force clamping his handles to Wheatley's. Activating rocket boosters he'd been hiding somewhere inside his tiny spherical frame, he twirled them both around, causing the blue one to scream in absolute terror.

"Okay, okay! This is scary! This is me, screaming in fear! W-wait! ARGH!"

"Space dance! Dancing in space with Wheatley!"

"That's all very nice and possibly a little bit touching but please, please! Let's stop! Before someone loses an eye or a handle or a compass!" As an afterthought, he added; "When the hell did you get bloody rocket launchers, anyway?"

They came to a slow halt, Wheatley taking advantage of the magnetic force to pull himself into Spacey's visual receptor in an awkward, fearful hug. Spacey just giggled.

"Always had 'em," he explained. "Installed for space travel. Had to come to space. Built to come to space. So much space; gotta see it all."

Inspiration quite suddenly struck. Ignoring the tiny scratches that Spacey was giving him from all of his impatient, jerky movement, the blue core spoke evenly, trying not to get too excited about this new revelation.

"Spacey?" he asked, looking down at the blue marble they used to live on. "Spacey, would your rocket boosters, by any minute little chance, just on the off chance that the answer is 'yes', would they get us home?"

The Space Sphere rolled in place. "Nah. Not enough fuel. All burned out. Space dance used all the fuel. No more space dance."

Oh. Well that was a disappointment. Still. _Worth__it._

For hours, maybe even days, they floated together, handles clamped onto each other as they watched the universe go by. Neither core spoke, except for Spacey's usual mumblings of 'space'. He didn't even seem to notice that the intelligence core was still attached to him, happily rolling and tumbling in their orbit around the moon. Now that he had time to think about it, wedged into the hinges of the yellow-ish personality core… if he had to spend all of the rest of his life like this… he could probably just about manage it.

"Wheatley?"

He focused his optic on his friend's as well as he could, being so close to him. "Yeah, Spacey?"

"I love space."

Chuckling deeply, Wheatley tightened his grip on the other in what could have been called an affectionate hug. The loveable moron. "Me too, Spacey. Me too."


End file.
